The 4G race is speeding up!

It’s finally happened other major mobile networks in the UK have announced when they’ll be launching their 4G networks. EE has had a head start on the market as it was given permission by Ofcom to use some of its existing spectrum to offer a 4G service. It has made some inroads but will this give them an advantage now that the other networks are about to launch theirs? 

O2 has announced this week that it’ll start to switch on its 4G network on the 29^th August in London, Leeds and Bradford. The network claims that this will give 5 million people access to the high speed mobile internet service.  13 cities are planned to be activated by the end of 2013 these are as follows London, Leeds, Bradford, Birmingham, Newcastle, Glasgow, Liverpool, Nottingham, Leicester, Coventry, Sheffield, Manchester and Edinburgh.

Vodafone has also announced that it will be launching its 4G network on 29^th August which is the same day as rival network O2. London will also be the first city to get 4G coverage from Vodafone with 12 further cities by the end of the year: Birmingham, Bradford, Coventry, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham, and Sheffield.

Once again Three has decided to do things differently. This is necessarily a bad thing as they are the smallest of the UK networks and they are also looking at being the last to launch a 4G network. However this does mean that they’re able to learn from the other networks mistakes, plus there current network already supplies high speeds, but are by no means as fast as 4G. One trump card that they have announced is that they pledge to offer their 4g services as a no-cost upgrade, which looks to be a move that will ruffle a few feathers and may spark a price war. 

It currently looks like 4G offerings will really be hotting up towards the end of the year, when all the networks have gone live and coverage is more comprehensive. Customers will also have to make sure that their device is 4G compatible as most won’t be the LTE version.

Mobile World Congress 2013

The world’s biggest mobile industry event Mobile World Congress 2013 has now finished. We can now look back at the event and analyse the main points. If you want to see all of the most talked about devices in the mobile market, you can do it one week before and a couple of weeks after MWC. This isn't a joke as it's actually want is starting to happen as more and more companies are running their own events to launch flagship devices. Here are a few examples

• Sony announced the Xperia Z in January.
• HTC's flagship device "The One" was announced a week before MWC.
• Samsung are launching the Galaxy S IV ten days after the event.
• Apple has traditionally been absent from the event.
• Microsoft was predominately represented by its partners.
• Google didn't even have a booth.

This doesn't mean that the event didn't have any announcements as ZTE, Huawei, LG and some other smaller names have given us new product launches with their latest flagship devices. Samsung did show off the Galaxy Note 8.0. Nokia launched a group of low-end phones which should do very well in the African and developing markets. Plus Sony was giving out its Xperia Tablet Z to a select few to try out. 

So for news from the big players, MWC isn't  the Mecca it once was, however, with more exhibitors focussed on areas such as application development, hardware, accessories, mobile device management and unified communications, it really is a great event. From a business standpoint, MWC provides a chance to see all of the aspects of the mobile, connected world in one place and gives insight into the trends and opportunities for the future. It’s all about data.